Get'em while they're young

摘要

When he was 3 years old, my nephew Ryan spent two full hours watching a utility crew use a backhoe-loader to replace some pipe along his street. It was the longest period of uninterrupted time the child had concentrated on something, including the television, so before they knew it my sister and brother-in-law were driving Ryan around their Wisconsin town in search of other jobsites. I was working for a construction equipment magazine, so the next time they visited I took them to a Caterpillar dealership rodeo. Ryan quickly learned that working a mini-excavator is much more difficult than it looks. I sent him posters and miniature replicas of wheel loaders, bulldozers, motor graders, compactors, trenchers, skid-steer loaders, cranes, and other construction equipment.